Michael Jackson, king of pop
His private funeral has been celebrated at 8h AM (local time) at Forest Lawn today, the Hollywood Hills Cemetery on the hills of Beverly Hills where his body is inside a coffin of blue velvet king color gilded in the fine gold. 2 hours later, at 10h AM, the coffin were at Staples Center for his public funeral where:
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- and people who got lucky to get the ticket and the others watching it through a screen including myself.
To pay him an incredible last tribute during more than 3 hours in which the most memorable words were pronounced by his daughter, 11 years old, Paris Michael Katherine.
Update July 7, 2009
The Michael Jackson Public Memorial Service is scheduled for july 7th at 10h AM at Staples Center in Los Angeles but only 17.500 free tickets will be available through an online drawing at this website.
We will have until saturday 4th at 6h PM (local time) to register and the following day, winners will be announced and they will know where to take their ticket and also an official wristband of the event to be placed on our wrists to enter in the building.
In fact, only 11.000 fans will be able to be inside the building and the other 6.500 ones have to be at the Nokia Theater watching a live simulcast. The details of this event are not yet revealed and the doubt still exists if the body of the king of pop will be there or not.
For people who won’t be able to go there or not lucky to get one of those tickets, you can still watch this phenomenal event from your home since it will be broadcasted live internationally.
Update July 4, 2009
Michael Joseph Jackson, known as Michael Jackson, is dead june 25th 2009 at the age of 50 years old because of an overdose of medicine. Born in august 29th 1958, he started in 1964 his professional career with his brothers in a band called “Jackson Brothers”, then changed to “The Jackson 5” and later renamed as “The Jacksons”.
In 1971, he started in parallel a solo career and his popularity grew up a lot because of his unbelievable talent as singer, dancer and later compositor.
In my article, I’m not going to talk about his problems with the justice, majority about child sexual abuse accusations or even about drug stories. Not because I don’t want to share with you my opinion but particularly because it is not the goal of my topic.
Proclaimed himself as “king of pop”, I think he really was, after all he sold out 109 million copies of his album “thriller” (1982) and until now, no one has beaten this record yet and sincerely, I don’t think that someone will be able.
Nowadays, it is too easy to download illegally an album, even if artists are going to sell their albums at $1, I don’t think that it will prevent people to download it illegally. Moreover if you buy a song in mp3, are you going to share it with your friends, to sell it to them or simply to tell them to buy it ?????
Which are your favourite songs ??? For me, the best songs are when he was with the “The Jackson 5” and his album thriller, particularly the songs “thriller”, “beat it” and “billie jean” (all of them released in 1983) - I still have the album on vinyl bought at this time :-).
In this period, meanwhile filming a commercial video, his hair was set on fire accidentally by an exploded firework which made him suffer second degree burns to his scalp. After this accident, he submitted on some surgeries and his next album “bad” was released in 1987 although he participated in some singles like “we are the world” (1985).
Not only this album marked his comeback but also a change on his music with a sound more rock but still Soul/R&B and something more particular, his body. Indeed, he was diagnosed with vitiligo and lupus diseases which made him sensitive to sunlight and his treatment lightened his skin color and some chirurgical operations on some parts of his face.
All those modifications and his disease didn’t affect his talent and it is always a delight to watch his new video clip, particularly the ones with choreography. We must not forget that he invented the moon walk and didn’t stop to improve it until to the perfection.
The video clip of thriller was, in the 80s, a revolution by introducing a story line, a great choreography and sound and visual effects like a mini movie. He will repeat this technique on some of his future video clips like “smooth criminal” (1988) introducing the anti-gravity lean and “ghosts” (1997) with its 38 minutes.
After the album “bad”, he kept going on this style of music and produced 3 more albums - dangerous (1991), HIStory (1995) and invincible (2001). If you are going to ask me which new songs I like, the first one coming into my head is the one called “who is it” (1992).
On scene, he always tried to create a great show for his fans and for everyone who went to his concerts pushing some times until his limit. His priority was always to provide us a great moment. If he was not dead, he would have started his tour called “this is it” from july 13th 2009 until march 6th 2010, a series of 50 concerts held in London and on which, all tickets have been already completely sold out.
He left without being able to finish what he started 40 years ago and 3 sons on this planet - Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr. (also known as Prince), Prince Michael Jackson II (also known as Blanket) and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson.
June 28th 2009, during the BET Awards, Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, Jamie Foxx and other artists paid him a last tribute.
Everyone will remind him, not for the paedophile accusations never proved, not for the drug stories, not for his finance problems, not for the million profits left by his legacy, not for his many winning awards, not for his 2 stars (one on the Hollywood walk of fame and the other in the Los Angeles talk radio show) and neither as donator of 39 beneficial charity causes but as a myth and for new generations, as a legend.
July 1, 2009